California - Halloween in West Hollywood

The West Hollywood Halloween Carnival is supposed to be the largest Halloween event in the the country with over 400,000 people attending. I've wanted to go the last couple of years, but this was the first year that I actually went. A section of Santa Monica Blvd. is closed for the event and stages and food vendors are set up. The event was a lot of fun, the stages had a variety of different bands and performers. But the reason most people go it to see all of the other people in strange costumes. Here's a bunch of photo I took of some of the interesting costumes.

Los Angeles - Halloween Horror Night

Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Japan - Energy Drinks

Energy frinks seem to be pretty popular in Japan. Every convenient store has a big rack of dozens of different kinds of energy drinks.

Display rack at a convenient store.

Since they are so popular, I thought I should give one a try. I have to say that it was impressively bad tasting.

I was walking around one day and spotted this recycling bin in front of someone's house. This guy seems to be living entirely off of energy drinks.

Japan - Book Vending Machine

I was in a train station when I spotted this vending machine. It sells books, which makes sense for a train station, buy a book to read on your train ride. But what was a bit strange is that the books were waterproof for reading while in the bathtub.

Japan - Tokyo Game Show

Recently I went to the Tokyo Game Show, a huge video game expo at the Makuhari Messe convention center. The major video game companies were there to show off their latest videos games.

Entering the Tokyo Game Show

The XBox Booth

Booth Babes

Like at many conventions and expos, most of the companies at the Tokyo Game Show believed that Sex Sells (especially to video game nerds) and most of the booths were staffed with lots of pretty booth babes.

Strange combination of a Star Wars Princess Leia outfit and a Gladiator Helmet. I'm not sure what game she was promoting, but she always had a huge crowd whenever she came out.

Photographer feeding frenzy over some cute booth babes.

CosPlay

One of the other interesting things was all of the cosplay going on. Lots of people in some pretty interesting and elaborate costumes.

USA - I'm back in Los Angeles

I've returned to Los Angeles. But I still have a ton of photos to post from Japan, so I'll keep posting those and I'll start posting about some of the hopefully interesting things I'm doing here.

Los Angeles Sunrise

Japan - Hamburger

Here's some strange food I found at a convenient store in Kyoto. It's hamburgers, what's strange is that they are setting out on a shelf in a non-refrigerated area.

Japan - Coolest Van Ever!!

I had seen a web site about these crazy customized vans before going to Japan, but this was the first time I actually saw one in real life. All of those fins have to make the van do some crazy stuff if they get driving very fast.